Sunshine City, Ikebukuro

It was Fran's first time to go to a building this high... in Japan... well... ever!!! I was really excited about going up there, there is a very special feeling being up there... like a buzz, where you feel you are literally on top of the world!!! If I could live on the 60th floor of Sunshine City I would!!! We could see so much further than when I had gone up there by myself in October, and the mountains to the west of Tokyo looked HUMONGOUS behind the cityscape! I was super excited as the sun was setting.  We decided that we would walk around the building one more time, before sitting and watching the sunset behind Mt. Fuji. The picture below, you can just make out Tokyo Bay on the horizon!

I can honestly say that I wasn't prepared for how amazing this sunset was actually going to be... and it is by far the most spectacular, incredible, mindblowing thing I have seen in my time here in Japan. Gunna leave it to the photos... so here goes...

Autumn in Japan

Well, it is certainly getting colder, but no where near as cold as England is getting!!! I can't bealive it is going to snow in Manchester this weekend!!! Everyone better be wrapping up super warm and looking after themselves!!!!!!

The autumn is soooooo beautiful here, everywhere you look there are bright yellow trees and occasional "extremely special" maple trees which are soooooo red!!! Honestly they are just incredible!!!

On the 14th November I went for a photoshoot with my friend Ayla at Nogawa Park. It was such a nice day, we had a nice stroll around the park, chatted and I took some photos of her!!! She was so easy to work with - a natural model!

The leaves hadn't quite all changed colors when we went there, we searched and searched for the red trees but there were only a few leaves that had turned red and the rest of the tree was still green!

Nope, your not seeing things.... that really was a lady running with a ferret on a lead!!! I had to get a picture!!!!

The autumn sky really is amazing, there seems to be an incredible sunset... every night!!! Even when there are clouds....

Odaiba, Tokyo Bay

Finally we had the whole weekend off together for the first time since we started working here in Japan! Only problem was... I had an awful cold and cough. I think I caught one last week, then just as I was feeling a bit better I caught a different one! Typical hey! So yeah, we didn't want to do anything too strenuous, so we decided to jump on a train and go to Odaiba. Odaiba is just south of Tokyo and is a man made island just off Tokyo Bay with the Rainbow Bridge connecting it to the mainland. Going over the Rainbow Bridge was a sight in itself!!! When we got off the train we saw lots of people wearing festival wear... yukata and other japanese formal/matsuri clothes... there was a Dance festival going on. :-D Gotta love a Japanese festival :-) and it was Fran's first one!!!!!!

It seemed to be a dance contest, each performance would start and last pretty much the same length as each others! It was great fun to watch, seeing Japanese traditional dancing mixed with hip-hop and jazz!!!!

After watching the dancing for a little while, we went to see the view of Tokyo Skyline and the Rainbow bridge, and had our picture taken with the smaller version of The Statue of Liberty.

The view was great, the air was clear, we felt a few spots of rain, but all in all it was a great day for visiting Odaiba! We walked along the right side (on the photo above) in a park until we came to the artificial beach! It didn't look any different to a normal beach! except I guess the sand was white and in the Kanto prefecture the sand is a dark brown/black colour!

It was just so nice to actually do some sight seeing together!!! I appreciated it more having Fran there to share it with! :-)

There is so much to see and do in Odaiba but because the Dance Festival had totally taken our interest, we didn't really want to venture too far away from it! On our way back to watch the festival we came across a HUGE shopping area for young people and along the main road one side of the building on the ground floor was taken up by this...

Now we knew that Japan was "dog crazy"... but we just weren't prepared for this... Puppy The World... there was a dog hairdressers, a dog accessorize and clothes shop and a dog café/restaurant where you could take your dog and buy them something nice to eat... I imagine! We saw a lot of dogs... one that we saw was just silly! A couple pushing a pushchair with a poodle inside, who had 2 bows in her hair, and top and a short skirt on... utterly ridiculous (and a little bit cute too) - hehe! We had a wander around the shops and found this floor that was like an endurance theme park/Japanese game shows! There is also an indoor theme park there called "Joyopolis" we are definitely going to go back there - the rides look great!

We headed back to the festival and just chilled out... ahhhhhhhhhhh sooooooo niiiiiiiiiiice

We had to take some photos of the Rainbow Bridge at night time so we hung around til it was dark, it was soooooo worth it!! The view was fantastic! Loved it!

Akihabara Karaoke with Friends

After going to Asakusa Sensoji Temple I met Rieko from work, and we decided it would be nice  to stroll from Asakusa to Akihabara. We were meeting people at 7:30pm to go to Karaoke!
On the way, we chatted we stopped off at a games arcade (they are literally EVERY 5 mins in Tokyo!) and we had a mess around in the purikura machines (the photo booths)

We met everyone for Karaoke in Akihabara and we had a rock/guitar themed room, everyone had such a great time! I am so pleased I went for the job at Leafcup, I really woulndn't be without this lot! They are soooo much fun, and just live for the moment! I love it!

and lastly... a video... (I warn you these guys are pretttttty crazy, hehe I LOVE IT!)

Asakusa's Sensoji Temple is now open!

 I was amazed to see how unbelievably crowed it was in Asakusa ... It was silly of me really because it was a Saturday! Everywhere was covered in Autumn decorations, it all looked beautiful with the fake red and yellow leaves and the lanterns up. The weather is getting colder now around 23° at the hightest temperature but there is a cool/cold wind so everyone has been wrapping up warm, wearing coats, hats and scarfs... I personally think it's a little too warm still to be wearing coats and hats because when the sun is out, it's so hot again, but at night there is a strong wind it's turning a little bitter! I should be a weather reporter haha, I waffle too much haha... sorry about that! :-)

I remember when me and Fran came here first, the main Temple area was being renovated, so we couldn't even see it! When I walked to the end of this shopping market isle I could see that the new temple was finished... it was pretty awesome much bigger than I had imagined it would be! I think maybe it had only just opened or something because there were lots of festival stalls and food stalls and a little Japanese play going on, it seemed like they were celebrating the re-opening of it!

The view from the Temple steps... that's right... I went inside!!!

The art on the Temple's ceiling.